As new video, data, and telecommunications products and services are increasingly offered and bundled, with ever more options and permutations, cataloging systems have emerged for both customers looking for the products and services and service providers offering the products and services. In a conventional catalog system, the customer may search for a service provider's respective lineup of products and services through a customer facing interface of the service provider's respective catalog system.
Typically a customer may search through a service provider's offerings by individual products and services, or through bundled product and service offerings. Alternatively, a customer may browse the service provider's offerings by specifying a service requirement for functionality, performance, or price. On a service provider facing side of the catalog system, the service provider's catalog system may provide a way to track the availability of new and existing network resources associated with a respective product or service offering.
Thus, conventional cataloging systems offer a way for customers and service providers alike to browse and track a service provider's product and service offerings, the capabilities provided by the product and services, and the network resources provided by the service provider.
However, many product and service offerings increasingly rely on multiple carriers and other service providers for the delivery of the products and services to a customer. In such environments, because the catalog system is limited to a specific service provider's service and product offerings, it is unable to provide any information on an alternative service provider's service and product offerings, or other possible combinations of products and services.
Similarly, for service providers, the catalog system only uses the service provider's inventory of network resources, limiting the service provider's ability to access other network resources from other service providers that the service provider's products and services may utilize or be bundled with. Moreover, each technology platform within a service provider's own technology stack may utilize proprietary conventions to address the same need. Thus, conventional systems are limited in ability to design and search for products and services across multiple elements and using different technology platforms. Thus, a system for providing searchable best fit abstractions is provided by the embodiments below.